Three AI questions I get every week (and the answers)

Published 30 days ago • 2 min read

Hi there,

Format change-up this week. Three questions I keep getting, three answers.

1. "Should we build a custom AI agent for our business?"

Almost certainly not yet.

Custom agents are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and almost always replace something a ChatGPT prompt could do for $20/month. The exceptions: you have a workflow that runs hundreds of times a day with consistent inputs, OR you have proprietary data that gives the agent unfair leverage. If neither is true, you're building a side project, not infrastructure.

Try the workflow in Claude or ChatGPT first. If you find yourself running the same prompt 20+ times a day, then consider automation. Otherwise the agent is a vanity project.

2. "Is my industry about to get disrupted by AI?"

Probably. But not in the dramatic way you're picturing.

What I've actually seen: AI doesn't replace whole industries. It replaces specific tasks within industries. Lawyers aren't being replaced — contract review is. Designers aren't being replaced — first-draft mockups are. Copywriters aren't being replaced — generic SEO content is.

The real question isn't "will AI disrupt my industry." It's "which specific tasks in my workflow are first-draft work that AI can do 80% as well in 10% of the time?" Those are the tasks under pressure. Get ahead of them by doing them with AI yourself — before your clients or customers start asking why you aren't.

3. "Is it ethical to use AI for client work?"

Yes, if you're transparent and the output is good. No, if you're hiding it and the output is sloppy.

The clients I work with don't care whether AI was involved. They care whether the work shipped on time, solved the problem, and was actually thought through by someone who understood their business. If AI helped you do that faster, great. If you copy-pasted ChatGPT output without reviewing it, that's the problem — not the AI.

Disclose if asked. Don't volunteer it for every email. Make sure what you ship is yours, even if AI did the first draft.

These are the three I keep getting. What's yours? Hit reply — if it comes up enough, it becomes a future issue.

Talk soon,
Justin

Justin McKelvey

Founder & Fractional CTO

justinmckelvey.com

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Justin McKelvey · Austin, TX

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